Sir, I’m the Leonardo of Montana.

(SPOILERS) The title of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s second English
language film and second adaptation announces a fundamentally quirky beast. It
is, therefore, right up its director’s oeuvre. His films – even Alien Resurrection, though not so much A Very Long Engagement – are infused
with quirk. He has a style and sensibility that is either far too much – all
tics and affectations and asides – or delightfully offbeat and distinctive,
depending on one’s inclinations. I tend to the latter, but I wasn’t entirely
convinced by the trailers for The Young
and Prodigious T.S. Spivet; if there’s one thing I would bank on bringing out
the worst in Jeunet, it’s a story focussing on an ultra-precocious child. Yet
for the most part the film won me over. Spivet
is definitely a minor distraction, but one that marries an eccentric bearing
with a sense of heart that veers to the affecting rather than the chokingly
sentimental.

Appreciation for Jeunet’s milieu is not entirely dependent on one’s inclinations. His last picture, Micmacs, left me cold, evidencing what
happens when he relies purely on mannered technique, performances and gags,
with nothing in support. It’s his most indulgent film, the one where it’s easy
to say, “This is where the co-director of
Delicatessen would eventually finish up, his worst excesses allowed to
burgeon unchecked”. In between we had his macabre, sumptuous fantasy City of the Lost Children, Alien Resurrection (one I’ve warmed to
over the years, although I quite understand why the majority haven’t) and his
masterpiece Amélie
(I have seen A Very Long Engagement, but it warrants the least likely criticism
I’d expect to level at a Jeunet film; it’s rather forgettable).

Amélie remains the perfect marriage of Jeunet’s
captivating visual style, peculiar characterisation (housed within the
transcendent Audrey Tautou), strangely complementary facility for whimsy and the
sardonic, and rhythmic, musical approach to editing (the score by Yann Tiersen
is an all-time great). Perhaps I shouldn’t have worried too much about Spivet since Amélie, although it is a wilfully upbeat confection with a positive
destination that is never in doubt, is also resistant to schmaltz and tear-jerking.
Jeunet is quite capable of moving the viewer, but he’s too sprightly and
quick-witted to become treacly or cloying.

So it is with Spivet,
which may not share Amélie’s cinematographer (Bruno
Delbonnel has recently worked with the Coens and Tim Burton) but Thomas
Hardmeier lends the proceedings a similarly rainbow worldview.In particular, the landscapes are striking
and luminous, be it the Spivet family farm or the views from the train aboard
which T.S. hitches. Even Chicago’s industrial wasteland takes on a
transformative, magical atmosphere. Jeunet is a director who, like Gilliam,
Dante, Burton and Verbinski, is often only so many paces away from creating
live action cartoons (and for some of those, the overlap has at times been
overt). While most of these filmmakers are quite upfront about their skewed
worldviews, Jeunet is particularly partial to presenting his awry vision in the
apparel of idiosyncratic frivolity concealing darker more disturbing forces within.
Not usually enough to overwhelm (although Lost
Children gets close at times) but enough to catch the darkness
unmistakably.

It’s true that there is an air of familiarity about the
general circumstance of Spivet. The
child on a quest in an exaggerated environment recalls the likes of North, while the narration brings to
mind the likes of Babe, Amélie
and Pushing Daisies (and even Raising Arizona, in the way the Jeunet
leads us to visual punchlines). Reif Larsen’s list of potential adaptors
included Wes Anderson, and it would be easy to picture. Anderson too likes his
visual asides and punctuation points, and
Spivet is replete with them. I’m doubtful that he would have embraced the
workings of the young inventor’s mind as wholly, however.And when we see T.S. debate the different
routes to answer the telephone it summons the heightened planning sequences beloved
by Edgar Wright. Jeunet approach seems like a sure fit; the visual
representations that reflect the book’s layout (about two-thirds of it include
some form of drawing, T.S.’s depiction, ordering and mapping of his
environment) are seamless and complementary.

10 year-old T.S. Spivet (Kyle Catlett) is a precocious
prodigy with particular abilities in the scientific field. Even his teacher
takes issue with his towering intelligence (“You think you’re smarter than everyone else, don’t you?” he
remonstrates as T.S. proffers a copy of Discover
magazine in which his essay has been printed). He lives on the Montana Copper
Top ranch with his taciturn cowboy dad (the ever-excellent Callum Keith
Rennie), beetle-studying mum (Helena Bonham Carter, taking a break from Burton
wackiness and diving into Jeunet wackiness) and beauty pageant-obsessed sister
Gracie (Niamh Wilson). His monozygotic twin brother Layton (Jakob Davies) the
apple of his rugged outdoor-loving father’s eye, died in a shooting accident
for which T.S. blames himself. T.S. set himself the task of finding the key to
perpetual motion (“Such a machine defies
the laws of the universe”) and when he learns that the Smithsonian museum
has awarded him the Spencer Baird Award for his perpetual motion machine he
decides to travel cross-country to receive it, leaving his self-involved
parents and sister behind.

It’s fair to say the first two-thirds of Spivet are the superior sequences; the
introduction to T.S.’s farm and family, and then the journey itself. He travels
first by train, ingeniously encouraging it to stop for him by painting the
signal light red with a marker. Then he then hitchhikes the final leg (Jeunet’s
world is one where a boy may travel without fear, certainly of the predatory
variety). On the way, T.S. meets Jeunet’s actor talisman Dominique Pinon (as rail
yard teller of tall tales Two Cloud) and veteran Ricky (Julian Richings), who offers
offhand caustic moment comments (“Join
the army, see the world, meet interesting people and kill them”); Jeunet
delights in these kinds of moments.

When T.S. arrives to take his prize, the picture embarks on
a less interesting detour as Judy Davis’ flinty G.H. Jibsen sees T.S. as her
ticket to fame and glory; he is subject to inconclusive tests (“Thank you for evaluating my brain, Judy”)
and put on television. If this is sometimes bumpy going, fortunately it does
not lessen the impact of T.S.’s speech in which he gives an account of the
death of his brother (the first such we have heard). He discards discussion of
his invention during the preamble; we learn that it will last 400 years, so it
isn’t really a perpetual motion device. When he appears on a TV chat show he
even offers a sop to the capitalists, claiming that, even though a much bigger
machine could indeed power the studio, the outlay on light bulbs would still represent
a significant cost.Catlett has the slightly
the nerdy confidence of a young(er) Jesse Eisenberg and he isn’t always nuanced
in his delivery, but he’s genuine and restrained in the scene where he explains
his brother’s demise to the rapt audience and then again later when his mother
informs him it wasn’t his fault, “What
happened just happened” (Carter is also strong here, dropping the peculiarities
that have inhabited her post-Burton career).

The speech encapsulates the film’s twin themes of
immortality and loss, expressing with appreciable subtlety that T.S.’s
invention is a means to repair his world after the loss of his brother, through
the only means he knows how (scientific application). In other hands (those of Chris
Columbus, say) lines like “Thank you for
taking care of me, you’re one of the best families in the world” could
infest the film like sugary syrup, but T.S. gives off the air of the
even-handed, slightly reserved boffin; offputtingly obsessive and aloof to
many, T.S. balances this with unlikely empathy and insight. Jeunet ensures that
less is more where emotions are concerned; his reconciliation with his mother
is disarmingly brief, before it’s time to move on, and his father (“Can’t get horse shit from a cricket”)
needs only give him a piggyback (well, that and punch TV presenter Roy’s – Rick
Mercer – lights out) to show how much he cares but can’t normaly express.

While it’s the case that one is frequently reminded of a
junior Amélie,
with the flights of fantasy (Inside
Gracie’s Cortex is particularly wonderful, as is the moment where faithful
hound Tapioca says farewell while not taking his eyes off the TV), analyses of
the ways of the world from its protagonist’s point of view (fake and genuine
smiles, his observance of how his “Day and night” parents touched hands in the
hallway “as if secretly exchanging a few
seeds”), and bittersweet flamboyance, Jeunet’s film about “the Leonardo of Montana” offers much to
enjoy on its own merits. Jeunet should probably trying stretching himself a
bit, though, even within his own boundaries, if he is to avoid the much
maligned fate of Tim Burton (playing in a well dug sandpit and unearthing nothing
new).

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